My Predictions for 2008

Teresa, a loyal reader, writes:

I was wondering, can you please post a blog with all your predictions for 2008? president? world series? best S&P sector? worst S&P sector? favorite stock pick for the year 2008? favorite dow 30 component for the year? favorite asset class (large, small, mid, russell 1000, 2000)?

That's easy.

No.

I have nothing against Teresa, of course. But I am also no forecaster, and I have very little faith in anybody's ability to forecast stock-market outperformers. Personally, I take no one's advice on stocks: my meager retirement funds are invested in the broadest, cheapest, and most global index funds I could find, and even then I'm worried that equities aren't a particularly intelligent asset class to be overweight right now. I can say that anybody looking to me for stock picks really has no business picking stocks in the first place.

As for the president and the World Series, I'm afraid I have no particular insight at all into either race. I can tell you that over at InTrade, the favorite for president as of right now, by a huge margin, is Hillary Clinton. The market is giving her a 41% chance of being the next president; the second-runner, Barack Obama, is far behind on 17%, while the leading Republican, Rudy Giuliani, is a distant third on 12%. No one else is even in double digits. But we haven't even had the first primary yet, and it's worth remembering that at this time four years ago the leading candidate was, um, Howard Dean. So although the crowds might be wise, they're hardly infallible.

And the World Series? I'm not a sports, fan, sorry. But if I had to pick a team, I'd probably just go with whoever-won-it-last-year. That's Boston, right?

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